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Peppermint
IRL Background ' '''Name: '''Patty Newell '''Character Name': Peppermint Patty had never held much interested in video games outside a few phone puzzle games to pass the time in waiting rooms, but after her friend Rebecca’s constant begging she finally relented. Asuka had become the topic of discussion just about everywhere, enough so that even Patty had heard of it long before her friend told her about it. Patty and Rebecca had been friends since childhood, but a college scholarship that had been to good to pass up saw Becca move several states away. Their friendship remained strong despite the distance, but the phone calls and skype conversations can’t replace hanging out. Patty couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her friend again in person, despite her doubts about the game. Now she’s not sure if she should have listened to those doubts or not. Rebecca is dead, possibly for real, and nobody knows of anyway to contact the outside world for her to find out let alone escape this hell. While some people have decided to go out into the world and explore Patty has opted to remain in the starting city, offering her healing for coin and supplies while she attempts to wait out this nightmare praying that her friend will be there waiting for her when she wakes up. Character Stats Race: '''Kitsune '''Class: Healer Level: 3 HP: 21 Str: '''10 '''Dex: '''16 '''Con: '''12 '''Int: '''14 '''Wis: '''16 '''Cha: '''20 Equipment '''Chest Slot: Mithral Chain Shirt Both Hands: Masterwork Stick Bio Patty started to go glassy eyed, clicking between the various pages of information the website offered. Classes, races, about the world, about the gameplay. If this had been an advertisement for a fantasy series she might have been sold, but even the trust in her friend wasn’t quite enough to still the disquiet keeping her away from the game’s download button. Or whatever it was the VR system would require her to do to play. She hadn’t investigated quite that far yet. “You’re not going to have very much fun dragging me around. I’m not gonna know what to do.” “You don’t have to! That’s the great thing about it there aren’t any buttons to learn and the UI is really simple. Everything can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Besides it’s not like I’m going to be taking you into dungeons or anything scary like that. We don’t even have to do any combat if you don’t want we can just bum around the towns. We’re just gonna be hanging out together. Like we used to. It’ll even feel like real life. I promise.” She had thrown a link up into the skype chat box and begged Patty to at least check it out. The release date was coming up soon and Becca really wanted this to be something they could share together start to finish. Something just for them that they could claim since its beginning. Becca loved being able to claim seniority or “I did it first” and after the small string of bitter sweet luck they had both suffered this would be a real booster for her. And the game did make some very large boasts that Becca claimed they could back up. If what she said was true it really would just be like old times, except with weird animal people and vampires. She finally pulled up skype and began writing into the chat window. Okay how do I install this thing? ' '--- ' '''There were no real words to describe what she was feeling. The closest she got was like the one time she had torn a massive hole in the seat of her pants right in the middle of a shopping trip and Becca had lended her jacked claiming you couldn’t even notice while it was tied around her waist. Even if she was covered she still felt completely exposed and forced them both to go home so she could change. Warm air hit her face. The grass felt silky and soft when she touched it. Mud was squishy and cool between her toes when she took off her shoes to experiment and the water she later washed off with was cold enough to send goosebumps up her legs. Even her tail and ears were covered with soft brown fur and she could feel the weight of the jewels in her hair. Everything was so real that it just felt fake. It started to disturb her and if it wasn’t for Becca’s enthusiastic rush, pulling her from place to place and sight to sight she might have started to panic. Rather than ruin what was the best day of her friend’s life she tried to soak up Becca’s excitement, tried to let it become infectious. She tested clothing at some of the stalls, bought a fruit at one of the stalls though she couldn’t bring herself to bite into hers, and tried to forget that she was in a game and in general allowed everyone else's ‘hype’ to get her through hoping that eventually the surreal feeling would wear off. She felt like she was the only one in the game not having fun. “Lets go explore the forest.” Becca started to devour the fruit that Patty neglected, knowing better then to press her friend. She was excited, but not blinded, she could see how on edge her companion was and while she wished she could be as enthusiastic she got it. She really did. “No.” she had been expecting that. “I know there are monsters, but you don’t have to do any fighting at all. You won’t even have to heal me I promise. We’ll avoid any enemies and if we can’t I’ll take care of them.” Becca grabbed Patty by the shoulders and gently shook her. “They’re just beginner area monsters they’re not gonna be that tough. I promise. They’re made to be easy so new players have a chance to get used to the combat without to much threat of penalty.” “Why can’t we just stay here? You can go explore on your own time.” Patty didn’t mean for her words to sound rough, but the thought of combat. Everything else was so real, she didn’t know if she could handle combat even if it was just her friend fighting. “I just want you to see the forest. And maybe get away from all the people so you can relax a bit. Maybe play around and see what you can do. Aaaand maybe show off a little.” her friend grinned. Becca hadn’t been shy about jumping around, swinging her weapon in mock combat with other players and in general testing the limits of her character and the VR system. Patty, however, had remained reserved not so much as breaking into a short sprint to keep up. According to the website you didn’t need to be physically capable in the real world in order to work your character in the game. Mind was more important than body here and if you could think it your character would do it. So even a small child could perform great feats of strength and agility if they so wanted. Patty would have had no problem playing around with her friend, but if she was being honest with herself? She was shy. A fish out of water afraid of making it even more obvious to the other players if she screwed something up. Patty was silent for a good moment “Just for a little while, but then I want to log off for now alright?” Becca was trying, so hard to be supportive and while she was uncomfortable she didn’t want to just ignore that and let her friend’s efforts go to waste. Besides she did feel a little more secure just with the thought of being alone with her friend. Maybe it would help her to ease up a bit if she were away from the excitable crowd, though she was going to need some serious couch time with a book to recharge from this. She had to remind both herself and Becca baby steps. ' '--- ' '''Everyone was talking by now. It had started as fear hidden behind jokes about players not wanting to go back to their real lives anyway. Some assumed it was a bug or a glitch or something and someone would be along to fix it. This wasn’t like a regular computer game where you could just shut down the program if you were having trouble logging out after all. Surely someone would set things straight if there was something wrong. Or maybe the command was just hidden behind something stupidly easy that nobody had thought of yet. Patty didn’t know when the fear had turned into panic. She wasn’t even sure when people had first started to notice something was wrong. All that rang in her ears was Becca’s screams as that demonic thing had cut into her leg. She thought hits landing occasionally was supposed to be part of the game, but there had been very obvious shock and agony on her friend’s face. She hadn’t expected the attack to hurt. Patty learned very quickly how fast her character could run when bidden to do so, nobody had really noticed her return to the town. Patty curled her tail tighter against her legs, huddling as deep into the alley corner as she could letting the drama of the world ignore her as she tried to remember how to breath.